Now That's Independence!

By Vaughn Ververs

Updated on: July 3, 2006 / 2:50 PM
/ CBS News

(AP)

Now that you have a holiday (hopefully) from work – here's your big chance to catch up on what some of Public Eye's greatest hits over the last few months, all gathered conveniently into one fabulous post.

Before today's look at what it's like to be a Pentagon correspondent at CBS News, we spent the morning drive with Dan Raviv to see what life is like for a radio correspondent. We also headed to Capitol Hill during the height of the immigration debate to get a closer look at how CBS covers Congress. How's (covering) the weather? We asked CBS News' own weather men. What goes on behind the camera and around the world? Mario DeCarvalho, a veteran cameraman who's traveled the globe for CBS News, told us some of his stories.

We've also heard from a few of CBS' foreign correspondents about what it's like to operate in countries where the rules that govern the press are very different from those in the U.S. Barry Petersen gave us a peek inside his world covering communist China. Elizabeth Palmer shared a tale of a rare press conference in Iran. Beth Knobel relayed the rules for reporters in Putin's Russia. Lara Logan spoke with us extensively about the challenges of reporting from Iraq, addressing some of the criticisms about media coverage of the conflict.

And, we've taken a peek behind the scenes to get an idea of the thinking behind some of CBS' news coverage. Following Dan Rather's recent departure from CBS, we heard from CBSNews.com about how they were handling coverage of the initial murmurs of his news. We later spoke with correspondent Anthony Mason, who told us how he approached reporting for the "Evening News" on his colleague's storied career and rocky exit from the network.

Another report on CBS' own offered an opportunity for a look behind the coverage. When CBS was reporting on the deaths of two colleagues, James Brolan and Paul Douglas, as well as the injury of Kimberly Dozier, we spoke with a number of CBS people to get a sense of how that story was approached.

CBS producers and correspondents have also recently responded through Public Eye to outside criticism. "60 Minutes" Executive Producer Jeff Fager addressed some questions that one viewer had about the program's extensive coverage of golf-related stories on the network that was carrying the Master's Tournament. White House correspondent Jim Axelrod responded to the White House press office's questioning of his coverage of the Medicare drug benefit. When Bechtel had criticisms of a "60 Minutes'" report, producer Rich Bonin offered his response. Now, go enjoy the fireworks!